Putin May Have Plans for Both Trump and Hillary

It is a fact well known to every student of the Constitution that the Framers' fourth national institution—the presidential selection system—never functioned as intended. Yet the 2016 presidential election keeps bringing the Framers' concerns to the forefront, as we lose control of every item on their check list, from insuring that the office would be "filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue," to blocking demagogues who possess "talents for low intrigue," to avoiding "corruption' and "tumult and disorder." And as of today, we can add perhaps the gravest of their worries: the possibility that "foreign powers [will] gain an improper ascendant in our councils." Even widespread suspicions of foreign influence would be poison to the confidence needed for sound governance.

But here we are. Building on charges made over the weekend in the blogs and on twitter feeds, theWashington Post in its lead editorial Tuesday claims that Vladimir Putin is deep into "meddl[ing] in a U.S. presidential election" in the full expectation of being able "to reap a geopolitical windfall if Donald Trump is elected president." Besides noting certain business ties, with personal gains to be made by both Trump and his campaign manger Paul Manafort, the Post alleges what is close to treason:

The potential benefits Mr. Trump offers to Mr. Putin have been clearly and repeatedly spelled out by the candidate himself. Russia's most cherished goal is to weaken or destroy NATO; Mr. Trump has called the alliance obsolete. Mr. Putin dreams of reestablishing dominion over the pieces of the Soviet Union; Mr. Trump has said that he might not defend former Soviet republics Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania if Russia invaded, despite their NATO membership. Mr. Putin wants the United States to treat Russia as an equal superpower with its own acknowledged sphere of influence; Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised Mr. Putin and promised to work with him.

There would seem to be enough smoke here for one of the nation's leading newspapers to cry fire. On the other hand, the Washington Post could be deep into concocting a conspiracy theory of its own, one that uses the old trick of alchemy that turns lead into gold. The lead in this case is the scandal roiling the Democratic party sparked by the recent Wikileaks email dump showing that the DNC, and by implication Hillary Clinton, were up to their necks in tawdry tricks to destroy Bernie Sanders's campaign. The gold would be to transform this embarrassment to Democrats into a crisis for Donald Trump, on the grounds that Vladimir Putin, alleged to control this information, released it to help his preferred candidate. At a minimum, the conspiracy serves to deflect attention away from the content of these emails to the questions of who leaked them and with what motives.

The Trump camp has of course sought to brush this charge aside. And there is certainly a logic to this dismissal. Why should Putin want to get rid of Clinton when he has benefited so much already from having Democrats running the show? Wasn't it the Obama administration that initiated the famous reset with Russians, abandoned building a missile shield in Eastern Europe, promised the Russian president (as Obama himself did on a "hot mike") more flexibility after the election, allowed Putin to walk into the Middle East and become the dominant power, made the Iran nuclear deal that Putin so favored, ceded Crimea and eastern Ukraine to the Russians, and has stood by as Russian forces buzz our ships? Who in their right mind—and there can be no doubts about Putin on this score—would walk away from an arrangement that have proven so advantageous into a new relationship with an unknown figure from a party that has been criticizing America for its weakness—unless, of course, a new world order has been negotiated beneath the surface: "Strong men of the world unite!"